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Someone on social media is offering me to mine bitcoin and they take 10% of any profit I make. I started talking and long story short I was told to download blockchain wallet app.

They provided me the login credentials and I was told once I login to change my password etc. Does this sound like a scam or legit? I mean about them giving me a user id for a blockchain wallet app and I gotta buy bitcoins, transfer them to this wallet and they will mine bitcoins.

Variant:
The attacker requests that the user creates a new blockchain wallet and then shares the login credentials instead of creating the wallet for the user.

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  • I've edited this question to make it more generic for use as a canonical question and answer pair.
    – Murch ♦
    Apr 29, 2020 at 5:46
  • People that have this question may also find How do I recover from a cryptocurrency scam? useful.
    – Murch ♦
    Dec 7, 2020 at 16:11

3 Answers 3

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I was told once I login to change my password

It is important you understand why this is a trick intended to deceive you.

Wallets don't contain bitcoin.

Wallets contain a "private key" - it is this private key that gives you control over an amount of bitcoin.

The person who creates a wallet can copy this private key and use it to make a new wallet that has control over the bitcoin. Including control over bitcoin added by you days months or years later.

You changing the password on a wallet does not keep the private key secret and safe if someone else has previously already seen the contents of the wallet.

If it helps, think of the wallet as one of those keysafes with a user-changeable combination to unlock it. If someone has previously copied the keys inside, changing the combination that opens the keysafe doesn't keep you safe at all.

A keysafe
Keysafe with resettable combination - like a bitcoin wallet. It doesn't contain money. It contains keys that maybe someone already has copies of. Changing the combination on the keysafe (wallet) doesn't make those copies of the keys disappear.

See also

Mining deceptions

Wallet deceptions

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  • Nice analogy with the keysafe
    – chytrik
    Jul 8, 2019 at 18:54
  • Hey RedGrittyBrick, this answer is outstanding. I added the topic to our list of Canonical Question and Answer pairs: bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/a/698/5406. I think we may want to close a few of the topics you linked as duplicates of this one here.
    – Murch ♦
    Apr 29, 2020 at 5:40
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This is almost certainly a scam.

Never ever give anyone anything else than an address (things that start with 1..., 3..., or bc1...). If they ask for anything else, this is very suspicious.

A common scam is to make you create a wallet, have them add "watching" coins to it which are never yours but show up as balance, and then tell you you need to add more coins before you can withdraw.

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Yes, it's definitely a scam. As the old adage goes, "if it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true". The Bitcoin wallet application that you are using is governed by a seed words and not the user ID/password for the online login. So, in your case the attacker created this wallet for you, noted down the seed words and told you to login. Now, if you change your password your account details are going to be shielded from the attacker, but your wallet details and control would still be in the attacker's control. On the other side, the attacker is closely monitoring if you have deposited any bitcoins in the wallet, and as soon as he sees it, he is going to spend it.

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  • @mrsss, stay away from it. You can only watch the coins getting added, but only the attacker can spend it
    – Ugam Kamat
    Jul 8, 2019 at 1:18
  • I don't see why you should be worried about your email account if you haven't shared your password of that account. Email addresses are meant to be public. However, DO NOT send bitcoins to the wallet.
    – Ugam Kamat
    Jul 8, 2019 at 1:32
  • If you still want to use the site, make a brand new account. (There might be a way to create new wallet with new seed words - I am not sure - but I would be reluctant to try that unless you are sure you know what you're doing). Also, do not use the same password as the seed words can be seen in the settings section of the page, which would again compromise your wallet.
    – Ugam Kamat
    Jul 8, 2019 at 1:46

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